MUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH

TOPIC: Indian History

Context- As the Uttar Pradesh election rhetoric gets shriller, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, is back in the news.

Concept-

About Jinnah:

Born on 25 December 1876 in Karachi, now in Pakistan, (then part of British-controlled India) , Jinnah was a barrister by occupation at Lincoln’s Inn in London, England.
Jinnah was the person who successfully structured the dream for an independent Pakistan and became its first leader.
He is popularly called there as ‘Quaid-I Azam’ or ‘Great Leader’.

Role in Indian politics

In 1916, he was elected as the president of the Muslim league.
Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress in the first two decades of the 20th century. In these early years of his political career, Jinnah advocated Hindu–Muslim unity, in which Jinnah had also become prominent.
In 1920, however, Jinnah resigned from the Congress when it agreed to follow a campaign of satyagraha, which he regarded as political anarchy.
In 1940, in the Lahore Muslim League session, the first official demand for the partition of India and the creation of a Muslim state of ‘Pakistan‘ was called upon
His continuous efforts and negotiations with the British government resulted in the partition of India and the formation of the state of Pakistan on 14 August 1947.
Jinnah became the first governor general of Pakistan, but died of tuberculosis on 11 September 1948.

Major Contributions by him:

Muhammad Ali Jinnah is known to be the ﬁrst political leader to raise a voice against the Salt Tax.
He helped in shaping the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the All-India Muslim League.
Jinnah, also, was a key leader in the All-India Home Rule League.
He even proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan for protecting the political rights of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent.